BBQ smokers make some of the juiciest, most tender, and most flavorful meat dishes. Problem is, you need proper outdoor space to smoke food, since doing it indoors with something like this stovetop smoker is a guaranteed way to set off the smoke detector. The GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker changes that.
That’s right, it’s a real indoor smoker that creates wood smoke from pellets to impart that unique smoked flavor to your dishes. From short ribs and brisket to sausages and seafood, this thing lets you make delicious BBQ smoker recipes without having to leave the kitchen.
The GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker is a countertop appliance that looks like a tall oven. It has all the usual oven features, such as a front door that opens to the cooking area, a see-thru window for checking on the food, a digital display, and physical controls (knob and buttons). The tall profile allows you to place multiple layers of racks inside, similar to how people cook inside a traditional smoker, while a compartment on top allows you to put in wood pellets that it will use to impart the wood flavor that makes smoked BBQ taste so special.
Unlike traditional smokers, though, it doesn’t rely completely on the pellets as fuel, using them strictly for the smoke flavor. In its place, it uses similar heating elements to convection ovens to produce much of the heat that will actually cook the food inside, only burning a small number of pellets at a time (just enough to properly flavor the food). In fact, it doesn’t even produce smoke, which can get out of the oven and spread all over the kitchen, instead putting it through an active filtration system that, the outfit claims, will turn it into warm air that retains the smoky flavor before being released, so no smoke actually shows up even if you open the oven door.
The GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker uses separate heat sources for burning the pellets and cooking the food, so you can adjust both the smoke and temperature on their own, giving you greater control over your smoked dishes. It has five preset settings for the smoke, so you can impart just a hint of extra flavor or give it that full smoked BBQ taste, depending on your preferences, all while offering six preset temperatures for different kinds of food, although you can also just set custom temperatures on the fly once you’re better acquainted with how the appliance works.
There’s an integrated temperature probe for checking the doneness of your food, ensuring you don’t need to pull out any extra gadgets to get precise results, as well as a drip pan, so any oil and juices that drip out of the food will collect at the bottom for easy cleaning. Other features include a water tank that collects used pellets for easy disposal, three cooking racks (so you can cook up to three layers of grub), and a cooking area that can accommodate up to three racks of ribs, a brisket (cut in half and put on separate racks), a whole chicken, and a 14-pound pork butt.
The GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker is available now, priced at $999. It will also be on the floor at CES 2024.